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Empire sets path for NT well development

Rougemont

Empire Energy has drilled the Carpentaria-1 well in the Northern Territory to total depth to complete an evaluation program at the Beetaloo Sub-basin site.

The company carried out an extensive formation evaluation program at the well, which is now cased, cemented and suspended.

It plans to release results of the program later this quarter, before updating its resource estimates in the first quarter of next year.

In the second quarter of 2021, Empire plans to start hydraulic stimulation and flow testing at Carpentaria-1.

Empire’s evaluation program has established that the thick Velkerri Formation in EP187 contains liquid-rich gas across multiple pay zones.

According to Empire, the zones have attractive technical characteristics for further appraisal and production testing.

The company expanded the evaluation program following initial drilling results that were encouraging, with all logging, DFIT (diagnostic fracture injection testing) and large diameter rotary sidewall coring successfully executed.

Empire managing director Alex Underwood said the gas across the Velkerri Formation was thicker than the company had anticipated.

“Initial logging results demonstrate the presence of target pay zones in the Middle Velkerri A, B and C and a new target we are calling the Middle Velkerri Intra A / B,” Underwood said.

“The thickness of the target pay zones, average gas saturation and average porosity are encouraging and compare favourably to results achieved to date by our neighbours in the Beetaloo Sub-basin.”

Empire will carry out further analysis of the program in collaboration with engineering and core laboratory experts to refine gas-in-place estimates and the company’s knowledge of the Velkerri Formation.

“The results of this analysis will allow us to optimise our hydraulic stimulation design for the Q2 2021 appraisal program and are likely to have a material impact on our existing prospective resource estimates, which had previously assumed that the Velkerri Shale would contain dry gas,” Underwood added.

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